The Bethesda Blog has word that the Windows and PlayStation 3 editions of the Dragonborn DLC for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will be released next month. The PC edition is expected on February 5th and the PS3 edition does not have an exact date, but they say all three DLC packs should be out for Sony's system by the end of February.

NoodleFish wrote on Jan 19, 2013, 10:37:I too am about to gear up for another play through. Can anyone recommend some worthwhile mods to install? I've pretty much only used SkyUI as I was trying to keep things vanilla on my first play through.

Sounds of Skyrim (extra sounds, like birds chirping, falmer moaning in the distance within a cave, etc)

Birds (more birds, flocks flying up from trees when you for example shout etc)

DYNAVISION DoF, or something (lets you adjust the vanilla DoF, very user friendly and nothing of that ENB DoF crap that shouldn't be meant for playing). I love this mod because I made it give the far distant silhouettes of mountains a subtle blur, making them less edgy etc.

Unequip Quivers, or something (makes you automatically unequip your quivers when you're not using your bow, and re-equip them when you do)

Climates of Temriel, gives you 500+ new weathers plus sound effects and a much much prettier sky. I edited the ENB though, disabling SSAO and that dynamic DoF. The sunflare and the way the sunrays seep through the trees and over mountains, walls and buildings is an amazing, amazing visual addition to the game (imo!).

These mods are a subtle improvement to the game. Keeping it very much vanilla, but with a strong immersive effect and much better visuals.

No one knows the percentages but Bethesda reps have talked about great sales on PC for both Skyrim and Dishonored. In Dishonored's case they specifically mentioned Steam sale numbers as a reason they consider it a franchise and successful.

Calling something a conspiracy theory is a pretty blatant attempt to discredit it by associating it with a fringe element. There is nothing strange about the fact that they delayed two platforms for an unknown reason in favor of releasing on the Xbox 360 first. This is commonly done by publishers because Microsoft gives them money to do it, it is a documented fact that has happened over a dozen times. We don't know if that's the case here but it's certainly a valid theory.

You aren't privy to the details any more than the rest of us so please stop trying to elevate your opinion as if it somehow contains any facts or insider knowledge when you haven't referenced anything, the patronization isn't productive.

Jerykk wrote on Jan 19, 2013, 05:32:The only real clue as to Skyrim's PC sales figures is a comment made by Todd Howard during a press conference, in which he referred to PC Skyrim players as "millions." If statisticbrain's total sales figure (10 million) is accurate, then the 14% figure they show can't be correct because that's only a little over one million and therefore singular, not plural.

But really, any site that claims to have sales figures without actually citing any verifiable sources is pretty worthless. Again, see VGChartz.

Since Valve doesn't release public numbers for Steam sales I think we can assume these percentages are for retail units sold. If so that's actually quite good in terms of PC sales. Most PC players have long since moved into the digital distribution realm.

On another note, I hope they don't fuck over the PS3 players this time around. All the promises that they were still working on the other DLC for the PS3 version of the game never came to anything.

I too am about to gear up for another play through. Can anyone recommend some worthwhile mods to install? I've pretty much only used SkyUI as I was trying to keep things vanilla on my first play through.

Kastagir wrote on Jan 19, 2013, 01:12:While I share everyone's frustration (I am a PC gamer after all), this XBOX360 exclusivity conspiracy nonsense is just getting silly. If all that were holding it up was an exclusivity deal with Microsoft, it would have released on January 04 or 05. Believing that the PC version of the DLC was held back until the PS3 version was ready is slightly more believable (though no less aggravating).

Remember that content (not updates) for Skyrim is developed on the 360, just like the main game was. Porting to other platforms (PC and PS3) takes time. It's not a set amount of time and the longer period that Dragonborn has taken to port to these platforms is more likely an indication of its size than anything else.

I'm not saying people shouldn't be irritated at Bethesda, but clinging to this exclusivity conspiracy is really not productive. People need to educate Bethesda of the foolishness of developing primarily on a platform that is 8 years old and technologically obsolete. And that says nothing of the fact that it's highly insulting to the most loyal (and oldest) members of their fanbase who supported them through TES III: Morrowind.

I supported them since Daggerfall and some since Arena. I wouldn't say that the TES III fans are the most loyal and certainly not the oldest I still wish they'd make an elder scrolls more like Daggerfall. Procedural generation is the future! With the tech we have now, we can make it look good...

Protips: If Bethesda ever released sales figures for Skyrim, we'd know about it. We'd have news articles everywhere pointing to a press release straight from the horse's mouth. Steam doesn't release sales figures, so the numbers would have to come from them. Any web site spewing statistics without referencing a source is flat-out making shit up, period. They're exploiting the desire for such information, preying on the gullibility of the average person who would take internet "facts" at face value.

The only real clue as to Skyrim's PC sales figures is a comment made by Todd Howard during a press conference, in which he referred to PC Skyrim players as "millions." If statisticbrain's total sales figure (10 million) is accurate, then the 14% figure they show can't be correct because that's only a little over one million and therefore singular, not plural.

But really, any site that claims to have sales figures without actually citing any verifiable sources is pretty worthless. Again, see VGChartz.

dj LiTh wrote on Jan 18, 2013, 23:56:I dont know, i'd like to see the numbers personally. I think that Elder Scrolls games have always been pc-centric and i'm willing to bet more sales on PC, maybe with the exception of Oblivion but i'd say that would be it.

PC sales, as of last July (8 months after release) accounted for only 14% of total sales. PS3 had 27% and Xbox360 had 59%.

Now, tell me again why they don't consider the PC a priority? Personally, I'm just glad they're willing to deal with the headaches brought about from releasing the construction set to only 14% of their audience.

Very interesting, thanks for the link. I wonder where that site gets their info from (I assume directly from the publisher?)

If so, then Steam's "weekly top 10" really doesn't mean shit, as it's apparently talking about a few hundred sales or so? (then again, how does that add up to 1+ billion revenue?)

I'm pretty skeptical about those numbers, but without any evidence, I of course have nothing to refute them.

Kastagir wrote on Jan 19, 2013, 01:12:While I share everyone's frustration (I am a PC gamer after all), this XBOX360 exclusivity conspiracy nonsense is just getting silly. If all that were holding it up was an exclusivity deal with Microsoft, it would have released on January 04 or 05. Believing that the PC version of the DLC was held back until the PS3 version was ready is slightly more believable (though no less aggravating).

Remember that content (not updates) for Skyrim is developed on the 360, just like the main game was. Porting to other platforms (PC and PS3) takes time. It's not a set amount of time and the longer period that Dragonborn has taken to port to these platforms is more likely an indication of its size than anything else.

I'm not saying people shouldn't be irritated at Bethesda, but clinging to this exclusivity conspiracy is really not productive. People need to educate Bethesda of the foolishness of developing primarily on a platform that is 8 years old and technologically obsolete. And that says nothing of the fact that it's highly insulting to the most loyal (and oldest) members of their fanbase who supported them through TES III: Morrowind.

As Dades mentioned, there's no conspiracy here. It's an established fact that MS pays publishers for timed DLC exclusivity. They've done this with many games like GTA4, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Skyrim, Tomb Raider: Underworld, Call of Duty, etc. Most publishers agree to it because they sell the most copies on Xbox anyway, so they don't really care about screwing the other platforms.

Also, porting DLC isn't the same as porting a game from scratch. DLC is 99.9% assets, not code. Most assets are cross-platform and don't require any platform-specific changes. Code, on the other hand, is largely platform-specific and requires a lot more time and effort to port from one platform to another.

Anywho, I think Skyrim's PC success may actually dissuade Bethesda from signing exclusivity deals with MS in the future. We'll have to wait and see.

And yes, that statisticsbrain site seems about as reliable as VGChartz. Which is to say, not at all. It claims that they verified the numbers with Bethesda, Steam and Zenimax but fail to provide links to any actual sources. Given the fact that Valve doesn't release Steam sales figures to anyone and publishers only share them through press releases and such, I seriously doubt that statisticsbrain.com has insider info on Skyrim's sales figures.

It's not a fringe conspiracy theory, just a financial reality of the industry. Microsoft is well known for giving publishers large amounts of money for timed exclusivity for DLC. They do this because its cheaper than paying for studios to produce exclusive title franchises. For example they gave Rockstar $50 million for an exclusivity period on DLC for GTA 4. They do this all the time with big name releases and advertise the DLC heavily on Live and in public space.

Maybe that's the case here, no one knows for certain including you, either scenario has merit. I don't really care about a wait, Skyrim was a good game and the Xbots can beta test my content for me if they want so as long as I get it eventually.

While I share everyone's frustration (I am a PC gamer after all), this XBOX360 exclusivity conspiracy nonsense is just getting silly. If all that were holding it up was an exclusivity deal with Microsoft, it would have released on January 04 or 05. Believing that the PC version of the DLC was held back until the PS3 version was ready is slightly more believable (though no less aggravating).

Remember that content (not updates) for Skyrim is developed on the 360, just like the main game was. Porting to other platforms (PC and PS3) takes time. It's not a set amount of time and the longer period that Dragonborn has taken to port to these platforms is more likely an indication of its size than anything else.

I'm not saying people shouldn't be irritated at Bethesda, but clinging to this exclusivity conspiracy is really not productive. People need to educate Bethesda of the foolishness of developing primarily on a platform that is 8 years old and technologically obsolete. And that says nothing of the fact that it's highly insulting to the most loyal (and oldest) members of their fanbase who supported them through TES III: Morrowind.

I think he just grabbed the first google result. The steam source on those stats is only the concurrent users, I would be hesitant to say they accurately include digital figures in the platform totals for all three platforms. There isn't really a breakdown of DLC compared to actual unit sales either. A number of the stats seem to come directly from other articles and press releases as well, I would be interested in seeing if they confirmed them from Zenimax directly or not because I can't find any other references to platform sales breakdowns by Bethesda or Zenimax. I am not inclined to trust those figures as presented, the PC figures could easily be more or less. I do find it difficult to believe the PS3 version, which was notoriously buggy and had terrible press, outsold the PC with steam sales figured in.

The construction set tools is what they use in house, they do some work polishing them up for public consumption but it extends the game and sells more copies in the long run so it's not exactly a work of charity.

dj LiTh wrote on Jan 18, 2013, 23:56:I dont know, i'd like to see the numbers personally. I think that Elder Scrolls games have always been pc-centric and i'm willing to bet more sales on PC, maybe with the exception of Oblivion but i'd say that would be it.

PC sales, as of last July (8 months after release) accounted for only 14% of total sales. PS3 had 27% and Xbox360 had 59%.

Now, tell me again why they don't consider the PC a priority? Personally, I'm just glad they're willing to deal with the headaches brought about from releasing the construction set to only 14% of their audience.

One of the reasons for the massive popularity is all the mods that keep giving the game time in the media and also keep the community alive and buzzing. So, the PC is more important than that, and I think that they do know it.

Oh yeah, day one for me too. I'm an ES whore.

I also doubt the validity of these numbers. I mean, they state Steam as a source and Steam doesn't divulge sale numbers.

dj LiTh wrote on Jan 18, 2013, 23:56:I dont know, i'd like to see the numbers personally. I think that Elder Scrolls games have always been pc-centric and i'm willing to bet more sales on PC, maybe with the exception of Oblivion but i'd say that would be it.

PC sales, as of last July (8 months after release) accounted for only 14% of total sales. PS3 had 27% and Xbox360 had 59%.

Now, tell me again why they don't consider the PC a priority? Personally, I'm just glad they're willing to deal with the headaches brought about from releasing the construction set to only 14% of their audience.

I dont know, i'd like to see the numbers personally. I think that Elder Scrolls games have always been pc-centric and i'm willing to bet more sales on PC, maybe with the exception of Oblivion but i'd say that would be it.

This is also a day 1 purchase for me, only because i'm a Elder Scroll slut and cant get enough.

Creston wrote on Jan 18, 2013, 22:47:That said, I'm pretty sure that Skyrim is outselling the consoles on PC, so I do hope that Bethesda will stop all this fucking "30 60 days exclusive" bullshit in favor of fucking Microsoft.

Why would they? Microsoft is willing to pay them for timed exclusives for the XBox. No one is going to pay them for timed exclusives for the PC. And since there's no way to tell how many (if any) sales they are losing on the PC from the timed exclusives, the visible money says keep doing them.